For Leandro

April 2020

Your mother always said you would be my favorite, looking back at things now, I can’t help but crumble inward with how we will never be able to resolve all of our unshared memories and moments together.

Your older brother loves you deeply, without ever having met you. He knows your name.

He carries your dreams, your sorrows, your triumphs & heartbreaks with him. He is strengthening by your spirit and resolve. Your kicks, flash and brilliance.

Tu Alma Entera.

The way we live now. The epoch of separation, advanced social distancing, where I will not be able to hold others or hold you, to grieve properly.

I weep. I moan and carry with me the heavy burden of never having held your hand.

I rush, zoom & run every red light, disobeying all traffic guidelines, on empty Brooklyn streets, in order to drop your brother off with your grandmother, so he won’t hear us, he won’t have this memory scalded into his mind.

We spare him this despair.

A half empty OBGYN office, bare bones staff, everyone’s identity hidden behind masks & face shields, cold, distanced, fearful of everything and everyone.

We’re called into a empty conference room where a doctor over speaker telephone console tells us blankly “He has Expired.”

“There is no heartbeat.”

Your name is Leandro. Man from Lions.

Kenji-Strong intelligent Second son

Jet-Supersonic, SuperNatural, a force unable to be stopped

You were too quick for us,

YOU ARE UNSTOPPABLE.

I am so sorry.

You will always be with us, You are a part of me, tattooed on my skin and on my soul, now and Forever.

You are too good for this world.

How so many others are suffering now on earth is not paled by this grief, but intertwined.

Life is not fair, but unapologetically BALANCED.

Love in the time of Plague.

You are a burning light, wonderful, powerful and one that can never be extinguished.

Your embers will echo & rip and tear through our lives forever.

Scarred minds, of what never was and what can never be.

I am sorry that I will never be able to help guide you through your quest. I won’t be able to help you understand what this realm is all about. What it might be.

I’m sorry you won’t be able to fight with your older brother, tumbling all around us, vying for our attention.

This chaotic game space, I can’t even understand it, I won’t ever be able to comprehend it, but my longing to share stories with you and see things through your eyes is something I will always resent.

We know that you enjoyed great music. You would put on a show for your mother while Stevie Wonder played on her Belly.

The song “I Believe” will always bring you back to us.

I can’t fathom why this is happening.

Your presence has left us with the biggest checkpoint incomplete in our game.

Dreams of watching you grow and evolve into whatever adulthood you desired, I pour a whiskey neat, for us, you are my lion cub.

Your brother would’ve teased you for being his little counterpart, his attention meter draining from all the time you and I would have shared together.

Perhaps your sacrifice was to save someone or perhaps you saw the writing on the wall for many of us.

Your NAME, the memory of the whisp of you lives on. You fly by.

Man from Lions, Strong Intelligent Second Son, Quick as a Flash, forward moving, without barriers or boundaries.

You were the Fire that fueled the engine for many of my efforts this new era. I was building things for you, your mother & your older brother.

Our Exclusive Club.

I can never repay you for helping your mother recover from her appendix surgery and risks, we tried our best to safeguard you and wade through very deep and uncertain waters.

I am so sorry, I failed you.

Closing my eyes to images of your face having never seen you, I wonder who you would have looked like.

Would you have your mother’s dimples, your brothers grin, my hands?

The closure we seek will never be enough. Numb, it’s hard to hear anything, eyes burning from the salt of seemingly endless streams of tears.

Because of our current world events, I cannot hold your mother’s hand as your are removed, studied and eventually discarded, incinerated without notice.

Without us ever knowing, OR BEING ABLE TO VERIFY, if it is really all of you, no confirmation, no proof of all that remains.

Your mother is the strongest woman you will never know

We will never truly know what happened.

Our Family reaffirming it is no one’s fault

“These things happen… God Only Knows… There’s a Better place…”

blah. Blah. BLAH

The anger inside churns into knowing.

A knowing that no one truly has control over anything in this world.

You have a name, you have a family that lives for you and loves you, endlessly.

Contacting a funeral home is insanity and leaves us with no resolve, no less than six funeral homes we have contacted these past few days, all prepping for a COVID influx unlike anything we have ever seen and are extremely under-prepared for.

“Sir, we won’t be able to give you and your family the proper attention you deserve…

At this time, and for the foreseeable future”

Your motionless body resided with us for some time, we still feel you here.

That will never change.

Eventually you are taken away.

We will ensure that you make your way back to us. Your Last images seared into our very being.

For this might be the only chance at closure we may ever have. We must find you.

This is the new normal for…Everything.

This will NEVER be normal for us.

You exist in our dreams, I have seen your face, I can’t remember it clearly, I never will.

Your Mother says you have my chin.

I chase you after you, longingly

I will never be able to catch you

We will meet again one day, in some other time, some other playthrough.

Leandro Kenji Jet Rodriguez Jimenez

2019–2020

Shattered dreams, worthless years,

Here am I encased inside a hollow shell,

Life began, then was done,

Now I stare into a cold and empty well.

The many sounds that meet our ears, the sights our eyes behold,

Will open up our merging hearts,

And feed our empty souls.

I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever,

I believe when I fall in love this time it will be forever.

Without despair we will share,

And the joys of caring will not be replaced,

What has been must never end

And with the strength we have won’t be erased,

When the truths of love are planted firm,

They won’t be hard to find,

And the words of love I speak to you will echo in my mind.

I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever,

I believe when I fall in love this time it will be forever.

I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever,

I believe when I fall in love with you it will be forever.

For every Mother, Father, Sister, Brother, Husband, Wife, Partner, Best Friend…

EVERY. Person. Alive.

We as a collective are experiencing unexpected, unimaginable loss on a Global Scale.

This is an account of loss and love in the time of Pandemia.

This is no greater than any loss in any other time.

It deviates all the same. Only this time,

We must distance to unite.

We must stay apart to eventually come together.

In a future time.

Where all of us can share happiness and bring true closure to all of our open wounds.

As around the sun the earth knows she’s revolving
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early May
Just as hate knows love’s the cure
You can rest your mind assured
That I’ll be loving you always

As now can’t reveal the mystery of tomorrow
But in passing will grow older every day
Just as all that’s born is new
Do know what I say is true
That I’ll be loving you always

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Always
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Always
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea
Always
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream

Did you know that true love asks for nothing?
Her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee?
To last through forever and another day

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I’ll be loving you always

As today I know I’m living but tomorrow
Could make me the past but that I mustn’t fear
For I’ll know deep in my mind
The love of me I’ve left behind
’Cause I’ll be loving you always

Until the day is night and night becomes the day
Always
Until the trees and seas just up and fly away
Always
Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four
Always
Until the day that is the day that are no more

Did you know you’re loved by somebody?

Until the day the earth starts turning right to left
Always
Until the earth just for the sun denies itself
I’ll be loving you forever
Until dear Mother Nature says her work is through
Always
Until the day that you are me and I am you
Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Always

We all know sometimes life’s hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your life times that and twice its double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed

So make sure when you say you’re in it but not of it
You’re not helping to make this earth a place sometimes called Hell
Change your words into truths and then change that truth into love
And maybe our children’s grandchildren
And their great-great-grandchildren will tell
I’ll be loving you

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Loving you
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Loving you
Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea
Loving you
Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream
Be loving you

ALWAYS